Berlin Film Festival 2009: Insider Report!

Film critic and writer James Mottram loves nothing more than to pound the international festival circuit, seeking out hidden gems and the next big thing. Now he's had some time to recover, here's James's insider report on the 59th Berlin Film Festival, held earlier this month...

Golden Bear winner The Milk of Sorrow


BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL 2009

With Tom Tykwer’s The International as its opening film, the fate of the 59th Berlin Film Festival was sealed on its first day. Admittedly, you could see what festival director Deiter Kosslick was aiming for. Starring Clive Owen as an Interpol agent on he trail of some corrupt bankers – everyone’s favourite hate-figures right now – it was a headline-grabbing opener. While attempting to replicate such classic 1970s conspiracy films as The Parallax View, it soon became clear that the timing of its story was fortuitous rather than prescient. Showing a lack of substance beneath the surface, it set the tone for many of the main films to come.


left to right: Notorious and The Countess

It wasn’t just that the Hollywood films in competition were bad – nothing was ever expected of hip-hop biopic Notorious and the Steve Martin stinker Pink Panther 2. The quality throughout the festival was poor, a fact reflected in the sluggish business that took place (or rather didn’t) in the nearby European Film Market. This year, there was no 2 Days In Paris to gee up the buyers; instead, you got Julie Delpy’s second film as director, the far less successful Euro-period-pudding, The Countess. Starring Delpy as Elizabeth Bathory, the 16th century Hungarian aristocrat alleged to have killed virgins and bathed in their blood, the only scramble this was likely to cause was towards the exits.

Little wonder jury president Tilda Swinton and her beleaguered team were left to reward the more unsung directors with the main prizes. A mixture of magic realism and social conscience, Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow took the coveted Golden Bear. The first Peruvian film ever to be in competition, it follows a girl whose mother was raped during the rebel violence that afflicted the country in the 1980s and ’90s. Meanwhile, another Latin American entry, Adrian Biniez’s Gigante, the story of a lonely supermarket security guard who becomes obsessed with a cleaner, also picked up three awards – including the Jury prize, shared with German director Maren Ade’s Alle Anderen (Everyone Else).


left to right: Gigante and Alle Anderen

The only American entry to win a prize was Oren Moverman’s credible directorial debut The Messenger. Moverman shared the prize of Best Screenplay with his co-writer Alessandro Camon for their powerful tale about two US soldiers (Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster) whose job it is to inform families that their loved ones have died in combat. The only surprise is that an excellent Harrelson didn’t also pick up Best Actor. That went to the Mali-born actor Sotigui Kouyaté for his admittedly moving performance in London River, the story of a Muslim man and a Christian woman (played by Brenda Blethyn) both searching for children in the wake of the city’s 2005 terrorist attacks.


left to right: The Messenger and London River

While it’s all too easy to assume that Swinton’s own eclectic tastes evidently steered the jury towards more offbeat decisions, it’s hardly as if the more established auteurs offered up anything of note. Stephen Frears’ take on Colette’s Belle Epoque-set novel Chéri reunited him with his Dangerous Liaisons screenwriter (Christopher Hampton) and star (Michelle Pfieffer), yet such a nostalgic get-together failed to re-produce the magic of their former glory. Primarily a love story, between the spoilt, listless Chéri (Rupert Friend) and the veteran courtesan Léa deLonval (Pfieffer), there are times when the film was as languid as its male hero.

The Countess

Another British director, Sally Potter, infuriated most with the aptly titled Rage. Featuring an all-star cast, this satire set in the fashion world made Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter look incisive and inspired. Essentially a series of talking-heads, all espousing upon the evils of the industry in front of brightly coloured backgrounds, the most you can say about this cut-price effort was that it was economically responsible in a time of global recession. Offering not one nugget of profundity, it swiftly becomes as grating as the ghastly characters – Jude Law as a cross-dressing model named Minx; Dame Judi Dench as a bitchy critic and Eddie Izzard as a repugnant fashion mogul among them.



Jude Law (yes, really), Eddie Izzard, Steve Buscemi and Judi Dench in Rage

Neither did the French directors conjure up anything spectacular. Bertrand Tavernier’s In The Electric Mist, a steamy take on the James Lee Burke novel, had great potential. His first English-language film since his 1986 jazz-era tale ’Round Midnight, it starred Tommy Lee Jones as a Louisiana detective on the hunt for a serial killer. But with the actor channelling just about every other part he’s played recently, it’s no surprise this potboiler has already gone straight to DVD in the US.

At least François Ozon’s latest Ricky, based on a short story by British writer Rose Tremain, held interest for an hour, before unravelling before our very eyes. The sort of film that might be spawned if David Cronenberg and the Dardenne Brothers decided to collaborate, it’s almost impossible to talk in depth about this tale of a mother and her new baby without giving away its central twist. Suffice it to say, Ricky’s physical development is as unusual as it is unforgettable. But while social realism gives way to black comedy, Ozon never manages to sustain it – and the film drifts off into the clouds in the final third.


left to right: In the Electric Mist and Ricky

At least the final film I saw provided some form of closure. Like The International, Theo Angelopoulos’ The Dust of Time was also a globe-hopping yarn that stopped off in Berlin. Featuring Willem Dafoe as director who gets word that his teenage daughter has gone missing, interwoven into this is the story of his mother Eleni (Irene Jacob) and the love she had for two men, Jacob (Bruno Ganz) and her husband Spiros (Michel Piccoli). Full of the Greek-born director’s trademark graceful images, perhaps it was apt that in the year that marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film’s final magical shot was of a snow-covered Brandenberg Gate.

The Dust of Time

James Mottram

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